Dirac Angestun Gesept

People who keep their accounts subbed via PLEX don't pay CCP, and the people who keep the market supplied with PLEX will continue to do so regardless of whether some F2P players unsub or not.

Easy to say that, but there's the rub. The whales presumably like to have someone to play with - and if demand is diminishing because poors are leaving, and yet the price is still staying high, that suggests supply might be decreasing as well. (Of course there are other explanations, primary amongst them that speculators are still buying all the PLEX they can lay their hands on.)

Spare me the usual imprecations; I have always paid cash for my sub and never bought or sold a PLEX for ISK, so I don't have any personal motivation here.

Caldari Provisions

Caldari State

Easy to say that, but there's the rub. The whales presumably like to have someone to play with - and if demand is diminishing because poors are leaving, and yet the price is still staying high, that suggests supply might be decreasing as well. (Of course there are other explanations, primary amongst them that speculators are still buying all the PLEX they can lay their hands on.)

Spare me the usual imprecations; I have always paid cash for my sub and never bought or sold a PLEX for ISK, so I don't have any personal motivation here.

I don't believe Eve has whales, i.e where 10% of the playerbase subsidises the other 90% like in most other F2P games. While there are some very rich players who buy large quantities of PLEX, CCP doesn't need or cater to these people. After all, until very recently Eve was a brought game with a required monthly subscription and new players couldn't hope of running their game via PLEX for at least a few months.

I would honestly love to see the statistics of how many people keep their accounts in omega state via PLEX vs subscription.

It's pretty basic economics why PLEX prices have risen and why there is literally nothing CCP can do about it. which is why I find these whinge threads so stupid.

Should they artificially limit how much a PLEX can be sold for? Everyone would just use contracts.Should they inject PLEX into the market? If they try to sell for lower than it's currently going for, it'll just be bought up in bulk and relisted for the current prices.

PLEX has just become more versatile and valuable, and the market reflects this. Skins, dual training, skill injectors, being able to buy exactly how much you need instead of an entire PLEX, etc. It's only going to get worse if they allow character transfers to be paid for by PLEX again.

Besides, people should be more grateful. Before if you didn't have enough ISK to PLEX your account, you couldn't play. At least now you can still play in alpha clones until you make enough to PLEX your account again.

Easy to say that, but there's the rub. The whales presumably like to have someone to play with - and if demand is diminishing because poors are leaving, and yet the price is still staying high, that suggests supply might be decreasing as well. (Of course there are other explanations, primary amongst them that speculators are still buying all the PLEX they can lay their hands on.)

I don't believe Eve has whales, i.e where 10% of the playerbase subsidises the other 90% like in most other F2P games.

Let's not wrangle over terminology. There are three kinds of players here; ones who buy PLEX with real money, ones who buy PLEX with ISK and have a shortage of ISK, and ones who pay cash for their subscription (or are vastly space rich) and don't care. My concern is that the type-1 players do after all want someone to play with, and if a large proportion of the type-2 players leave, they may leave as well, something that could turn into a death spiral (and if that is happening, CCP might well feel the need to intervene drastically). Given that some type-2 players must be leaving and yet the decrease in demand hasn't affected the price, I wonder if this might be happening.

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I would honestly love to see the statistics of how many people keep their accounts in omega state via PLEX vs subscription.

So would I.

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It's pretty basic economics why PLEX prices have risen and why there is literally nothing CCP can do about it. Should they artificially limit how much a PLEX can be sold for? Everyone would just use contracts.Should they inject PLEX into the market? If they try to sell for lower than it's currently going for, it'll just be bought up in bulk and relisted for the current prices.

I'm not sure you prove your point that there is "literally nothing CCP can do about it" by bringing up and dismissing the proposal for a price cap, which is obviously unworkable.

It is not at all clear to me that increasing the supply wouldn't have an effect. Speculators speculate only because they themselves expect the price to keep rising. If the price rise is driven by speculation it is in effect a bubble, and an indication that CCP might be acting to burst the bubble would make speculators very cautious.

That said, I think it's mostly skill farming keeps it high. I'm not sure what can be done about that because nothing will decrease the price of SP except massively increased supply, and as I recall part of the original idea behind skill extraction was to decrease the vast quantity of SP already in the game...

Giving characters a limit on the ratio of injected to trained SP would be an extremely drastic move (and would take some time to take effect since presumably that isn't tracked at the moment so all extant SP would have to be treated as trained) but would presumably cut the demand for SP considerably, which if it is SP farming which keeps the PLEX price high would have an effect. (Hell, if the situation is bad enough, stopping selling skill extractors [1] would do it.)

I'm not saying that should be done, because I have no idea (and neither does anyone else in this thread) as to whether we are in a "poors leave because PLEX too high -> whales leave because no-one to play with -> price still high -> poors leave" death spiral. But CCP has an idea, and if I were CCP and I thought that was happening, I'd be considering drastic action of that kind.

[1] Yes, I'm not stupid, I know CCP make money on them because they cost PLEX. But if that short-term gain is killing the long-term prospects, it might still be worth doing.

ETA: Or CCP could limit the supply of skill extractors and sell them for PLEX to the highest bidder, reducing the supply without such an effect on short-term income... and producing a truly hilarious outflow of fury from SP farmers.

I'm so tired of people assuming a large part of the rising price is due to these mysterious trillionare speculators, I see no proof. All I see is people trying to blame a natural increase in the price of a commodity that has simply become more valuable to players.

And I still haven't heard a reasonable argument as to why this is bad.

The only argument you have is that the small minority of players who play exclusively via PLEX will stop playing. Not all PLEX players, just the minority of the minority that cannot afford the higher prices.

Until the margins for SP trading become too small, PLEX isn't going to stabilise. It's actually currently much more profitable to spend £20 having 2 accounts subbed then selling the extracted SP, than it is buying 500 plex for £20 to sell for 1.7b. Until these reach parity, prices WILL continue to increase.

Even without SP trading, the constant release of desirable skins + buying exactly how much PLEX you need for them would have hiked up the price of PLEX substantially.

Just woke up, tired, ineloquent and hungry.

TL;DR

I foresee PLEX isn't going to stabilise until around 2.4b.If you can't afford this, pay with cash.If you can't afford cash, play as an alpha clone until you save up the ISK.

I'm so tired of people assuming a large part of the rising price is due to these mysterious trillionare speculators, I see no proof.

Well, go and argue with those people about that assumption, not with me. One of them wrote "If they try to sell for lower than it's currently going for, it'll just be bought up in bulk and relisted for the current prices", an assumption that enough speculators with enough capital exist to buy up any increase in supply on the assumption the price will continue to rise. You can probably find that one quite easily.

Indeed, depending on the figures you put in your sheer guesswork (although 20k unique subbed accounts is obviously much too small) we can suppose it's not a problem. With a different bit of guesswork we can suppose it is. That's why I say I don't know if this is actually a problem (and you don't know either), and just discuss possible courses of action in the case that it is.

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Until the margins for SP trading become too small, PLEX isn't going to stabilise.

I've said this exact thing upthread more than once, so I have no idea why you feel the need to point it out as if it will come as a revelation.